The Last Juror: A Novel - Softcover

Grisham, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 044024157X ISBN 13: 9780440241577

Publisher: Random House LLC US, 2004

Synopsis

In 1970, Willie Traynor came to Mississippi in a Triumph Spitfire and a fog of vague ambitions. Within a year, the twenty-three-year-old college dropout found himself the owner of Ford County’s only newspaper, famous for its well-crafted obituaries. While the rest of America was in the grips of social turmoil, Willie’s adopted town of Clanton lived on the edge of another age, until the brutal murder of a young mother rocked the sleepy community—and thrust Willie into the center of a storm.

Daring to report the true horrors of the crime, Willie made as many friends as enemies in Clanton—and over the next decade he would take stances, break barriers, and sometimes wonder how he had gotten there in the first place. But he could never escape the crime that had shattered his innocence or the criminal whose evil had left an indelible stain. Because as the ghosts of the South’s past gather around Willie, as issues of race and justice swirl around Clanton, men and women who served on a jury nine years ago are starting to die one by one—as a killer exacts the ultimate revenge. . . .

About this title

Review:

Like many of John Grisham's better books, The Last Juror is at its best when evoking the past--Mississippi in the early 1970s--and less effective when constructing the bait-and-switch plotting with which he makes a pointed argument about the law. When Danny Padgitt (one of a family of bootleggers that is effectively a large criminal conspiracy) is convicted of rape and murder, the jury cannot agree on the death penalty--and life sentences in this time and place are liable to be as little as nine years. Padgitt threatens the jury and when, once he is out, the jurors who heard his case start being executed, conclusions are there to be jumped to...

Grisham is arguing that justice has to be seen to be done, rather than specifically for the death penalty or even life-means-life sentencing. Though his case is loaded, it is never entirely sentimentalised partly because these events are seen through the eyes of one of his most engaging narrators--a young northern-newspaper editor out to make a name and a fortune for himself, but also committed to the truth and a saintly African-American matriarch who serves on the Padgitt jury. This is a deeply populist book, but never a stupid one. --Roz Kaveney

Review:

"The Last Juror sees Grisham at the absolute peak of his form – page-turning urgency" (Mail on Sunday)

"Masterful – when Grisham gets in the courtroom he lets rip, drawing scenes so real they're not just alive, they're pulsating – quality thriller writing" (Daily Mirror)

"The Last Juror does not need to coast on its author's megapopularity. It's a reminder of how the Grisham juggernaut began" (New York Times)

"Wholly engrossing – Grisham's story-telling knack has not deserted him; and the hint that something more serious is at stake than the solution of a crime gives the narrative an extra depth" (Evening Standard)

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House LLC US
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 044024157X
• ISBN 13: 9780440241577
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 486